Among the many cool things we saw about Cyberpunk 2077 is its character creation tool, which allows you customize your character’s look and stats, even allowing you to modify their street cred. However, the demo we saw this week showed only two cosmetic renditions of the character, one male and one female with different skill builds. CD Projekt Red has confirmed the creation tool will be much more diverse than this in the final version of the game, especially when it comes to physical appearance and gender.
For context, while Cyberpunk 2077 was being shown off at E3, a controversy regarding a risque in-game ad depicting a transgender emerged with some taking offense to how the ad fetishized or dehumanized trans people.
Speaking with Polygon, CDPR art director Kasia Redesiuk said the ad is meant to be dystopian satire, and the company’s goal is a create more acceptance for trans people and those with non-binary genders.
Then, speaking with Gamasutra, quest director Mataeusz Tomaszkiewicz confirmed the character creation tool within Cyberpunk 2077 would reflect this attitude. “One of the things we want to do in the final game (which we couldn’t show in the demo yet, because as you mentioned it’s a work in progress) is to give the players as many options of customization in the beginning of the game as we can,” he said. “For example, we want to do this thing where, as you create your character, after you choose the body type, you can, for example, use physical traits as you build your face that could be assigned to a man or a woman.”
Tomaszkiewicz then confirmed this would include non-binary options as well. “The idea is to mix all of those [options] up, to give them to the players, as they would like to build it,” he explained. “Same goes for the voice. We wanted to separate this out, so the players can choose it freely.” He also mentioned this attitude would also extend to how characters are depicted in the game itself. “We are paying a lot of attention to it, we do not want anyone to feel like we are neglecting this, or treating it wrongly.”
For more on Cyberpunk 2077, check out our feature on what makes the game a true RPG.